Could be that if Merkel is history then so is the EU. That is a little more than pure speculation!


Not much more, in reality.


There are several aspects to this. First and foremost, the immigration question is a vital one for the EU and should not be under-estimated.

But you should not mix up the future of the EU with the future existence of the EU. What is decided about immigration will, most likely, set the EU on one path rather than another. It will certainly have a major impact on what they do about external borders and, probably, about what happens to immigrants already in the EU. But that does not mean they fail to see the advantages of continued co-operation for example. Indeed, it may emphasise it.

Then there is that fact that Merkel is fighting a personal battle for survival, and it would be silly to assume what she says is unconnected with that.

But what it shows most of all is that the UK is way down the pile of things they are going to be worrying about.


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Then on the facts versus speculation. I have no way of knowing for certain, but it would be standard practice if the model used by the CER comes with confidence intervals, declarations of known limitations of the model and a history of validation results. So it will be accurate - again, assuming normal methods have been used - to say the results will be 99.5% certain to a certain tolerance. That is not speculation.

That people will be queueing up to do deals with us that are greatly to our benefit *is* speculation: no evidence for not is offered.


Analysis, with recognised limitations on one hand, blind guesses on the other. I know which I would call speculation.